The GPRA Modernization Act: Lessons for Wisconsin

1. The GPRA Modernization Act: Lessons for Wisconsin Donald P. Moynihan

2. outline • Defining performance management • A short history of performance management at the federal level • Do these reforms make a difference • Will the Modernization Act do any better?

3. Why this matters • Reporting requirements transferred to the state • Efforts at federal level are experiments: do they offer a model for states?

4. Different ways of Defining performance management • A system that generates performance information through strategic planning and performance measurement routines, and connects this information to decision venues, where, ideally, the information influences a range of possible decisions • Performance systems are a set of formal rules that seek to disrupt strongly embedded routines and ways of behaving • A tool in a democratic context with dynamic effects

5. A short history of performance management

6. Current era • Government Performance and Results Act - GPRA (1993-2010) • Program Assessment Rating Tool (2002-2008) • GPRA Modernization Act (2010-)

7. Gradual change in systems • GPRA • Routines of strategic planning and measurement at agency level • Program Assessment Rating Tool • Each program evaluated by central budget office, given feedback and ranked on scale from “ineffective” to “effective”

8. Next generation performance system? GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 • Chief operating officers/performance improvement officers • High-priority goals • Cross-agency priority goals • Quarterly performance reviews • Goal leaders • For summary, see Moynihan 2013 • http://www.businessofgovernment.org/report/new-federal-performance-system-implementing-gpra-modernization-act

9. Did these reforms make a difference?

10. What’s a measure of Reform success? • Implementation of performance management means using the data • Why focus on performance information use? • Without it, good things we want don’t happen

11. Dashed Expectations about use • Ongoing desire that reforms will foster use of performance data, but sense of disappointment • Bush: “After eight years of experience [since passage of GPRA], progress toward the use of performance information for program management has been discouraging” (OMB 2001, 27). • Obama: “The ultimate test of an effective performance management system is whether it is used, not the number of goals and measures produced. Federal performance management efforts have not fared well on this test. [GPRA and PART] increased the production of measurements in many agencies, resulting in the availability of better measures than previously existed; however, these initial successes have not led to increased use.”

12. Effect of performance reforms • Survey of federal managers • Does involvement in GPRA or PART increase use? • Not associated with purposeful use of data for management or resource decisions • increased compliance to reporting requirements,

13. Will the modernization Act do any better?

14. Prior reforms failed, will modernization act be different? • Too early to tell, but reason for optimism • Logic for many of the changes recognizes prior problems • Some of the organizational or individual factors that do predict the use of performance data reflected in new requirements

15. Key component of modernization Act • Most GPRA requirements left in place • Chief operating officers/performance improvement officers • High-priority goals • Cross-agency priority goals • Quarterly performance reviews • Goal leaders

16. Lesson: Look for actionable data • You might want to measure everything but you can’t manage everything • Problem with PART – equal attention to all goals • Modernization Act: • focus on important targets, areas of opportunity

17. Lesson: Induce leadership commitment • Leadership commitment associated with use • How do you create commitment? • Reputation: public commitments and responsibility (high priority goals) • Create leadership positions with oversight for performance (COOs, PIOs, goal leaders) • Select leaders based on ability to manage performance

18. How to make sense of data? • “Individual learning in organizations is very much a social, not a solitary, phenomenon” • (Herbert Simon, 1991) • Build social routines around data to increase • Attention • Commitment • Understanding • Problem-solving • Modernization Act: • quarterly performance reviews – Bob will address!

19. That’s it • Welcome your feedback and questions • Performance Information Project: • http://www.lafollette.wisc.edu/publicservice/performance/index.html • dmoynihan@lafollette.wisc.edu